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Improved compensation processes motivate client-facing teams at Marsh
Insurance and risk management leader transforms sales comp, delivering timely data to sellers, cutting time to pay in half, and freeing time for client service
Sales professionals at Marsh received data about opportunities and deal progress weeks late and had to navigate an inefficient sales process. These challenges took time away from client service. After implementing Anaplan, sellers at Marsh always have current sales data via a mobile application, can reconcile their transactions in half the time, and are compensated more frequently. This improved efficiency enables customer-facing teams to spend more time serving clients.
Anaplan has enabled more time to be spent with clients, which is how it should be.Kristin Jaffee, Senior Vice President Finance for Global Operations
50%
faster pay cycle motivates sales professionals to accelerate opportunities
30-day
lag removed from sales data cycle helps client-facing teams prioritize activities
Increased
frequency of sales compensation due to more efficient processes
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PARTNER
Working with clients is the core of Marsh’s business. As the world’s leading insurance broker and risk advisor, Marsh’s 45,000 employees provide clients in communities worldwide with insights, advice, and support to make their businesses better.
As Senior Vice President Finance for Global Operations, Kristen Jaffee ensures that Marsh’s finance operations support the company’s focus on client service. “We are overhauling the way our teams are organized, the technology that we’re using, and the way that we support our clients,” she explains. Part of that transformation involves sales compensation, incentive management, and planning processes.
Data at their fingertips
With the legacy systems used by Marsh, sales teams were frustrated by slow data delivery. “Our sales colleagues had to wait roughly 30 days to receive data,” explains Steven Guerrera, Vice President, U.S. Sales Compensation. Stagnant data on new opportunities, deals in process, and progress toward goals made it challenging for salespeople to prioritize the clients and activities that would deliver the greatest positive impact. Data issues also limited Marsh leadership’s ability to make informed decisions quickly and to adjust sales compensation plans to meet changing strategic initiatives.
The Marsh team selected Anaplan to address these challenges and help them extract value from existing data sources. They integrated Anaplan directly with Salesforce, enabling sales colleagues to model the value of their current pipeline in Anaplan and prioritize their work. A mobile Anaplan application solved the problem of stale data and enabled salespeople to view their current compensation status anywhere, at any time. “They don’t have to wait 30 days to see it,” Guerrera says. “They can see it today.”
Feeling the benefits
Marsh has cut the time salespeople need to reconcile transactions by about 50% with the Anaplan solution and can pay them more frequently now. “Our colleagues using the system can feel that benefit,” Jaffee says. “Our sales teams have become more motivated because they can see how lucrative any deal will be to them at any given point in time.”
Because sales teams and client advisors can navigate the sales process more efficiently, they can focus their attention on the important work that supports Marsh’s advisory mission. “Anaplan has enabled more time to be spent with clients,” Jaffee says, “which is how it should be.”
Kristen Jaffee, Senior Vice President Finance for Global Operations, Marsh: Marsh is a leading human capital and risk management firm. We have four companies, Marsh, Mercer, Oliver Wyman, and Guy Carpenter. Our main goal is to really help our clients around the globe reduce risk and run their businesses better.
I'm largely focused on the global transformation that we're going through right now. We are bringing together an operations group and really overhauling the way our teams are organized, the technology that we're using, and the way that we support our clients.
We needed a complete overhaul to our sales compensation, incentives management, and planning process and tools. And we chose Anaplan because we knew that Anaplan could suit multiple purposes.
Steven Guerrera, Vice President, U.S. Sales Compensation, Marsh: The main challenges that the system was designed to address is that sales colleagues had to wait roughly 30 days to receive data. So by that point it was stagnant data.
Kristen Jaffee: It was hard for our sales colleagues to actually see their sales in the system. It was hard for us to change our plans to quickly align with changing strategic pillars, and it was also very hard to use the data that we had — this very rich sales data — to actually make strategic decisions.
We found a way to integrate Anaplan directly with Salesforce so that our sales colleagues could model what the value to them would be for their current pipeline.
Steven Guerrera: We rolled out a mobile application that allowed them to view their sales compensation from wherever they may be. They don't have to wait 30 days to see it. They can see it today.
Kristen Jaffee: The cycle time to pay people has been reduced by about 50%, and we've also been able to pay people more times per year. Our colleagues using this system can actually feel that benefit. Our sales teams have become more motivated because they can actually see how lucrative any deal will be to them at any given point in time.
Having Anaplan has enabled our sales teams and our client advisors to move through the entire process in a much more efficient way, which has actually enabled more time to be spent with clients. Which is what it should be.
